With the onset of winter just around the corner and more petals on the ground than on stems, you know this is your signal to move indoors and try your hand at lighting with a twist. Of course, there is still plenty to shoot outside and oodles of seasonal stories to tell, but if you're like me, it's also a good time to catch up on a lot of photography related business (subject of a later blog).

The three photos below provide a glimpse into the behind the scenes of creating the Gerbera Daisy image above. I was excited to use the new hue lights by Phillips. My heart sings when I shoot wedding receptions with uplighting as it creates a colorful ambience so imagine my joy when Glenn bought me Hue lights for my birthday! You can control the color of each individually from an iphone or ipad. How cool is that? As you can see below, I set a combination that worked with this flower. In addition to the Hue lights (directed toward the side wall and floor behind the flower), I had a diffused LED on the table and a little flash to spot the center. I had all the room lights completely off as shown in the 3rd image below to avoid overpowering and washing out color from the Hue lights and unwanted reflections on the table. And, as if that wasn't enough I bounced my on-board flash up and back off the ceiling. Although I could have done this with a much simpler setup, I found the results flat and dull by comparison. Gerbera Daisy above was shot at 1/25s, f4.0, ISO 2500, & 100mm macro 2.8L IS USM, LED lighting, flash, Canon 5D MKIII.

The purple and yellow Irises below were shot on the same table using only the LED w/diffuser handheld above my left shoulder and projected at an angle down which yielded the nice reflections on the black etched dining room table. The orange glow is from the fireplace. Again, all the room lights were off (the room was essentially dark so I had to prefocus in Live View on a tripod with a remote trigger). Irises were shot at 1/60s, f3.5, ISO 2500, & 100mm macro 2.8L IS USM, LED lighting, no flash, Canon 5D MKIII.